Maddow strikes back at Dick Armey’s nonsensical attack

On her show Tuesday evening, Rachel Maddow responded to derogatory jibes made about her earlier in the day by former House majority leader Dick Armey during the AFP-sponsored ‘Code Red’ anti-health reform rally on Capitol Hill.

During the Code-Red event, Armey began to introduce Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who Armey oddly refers to as ‘Doc Colbin’ more than once, but he then stops and starts to spin a tale that took shots at Maddow. “The last time Doc Colbin and I were together, I had the amazing opportunity to watch him receive a lecture on health care from a woman named, uh, uh, uh… ‘Maddox.’ A television personality, who I’m told has a Ph.D. in something that doesn’t matter. Who knew she was qualified to lecture the good physician on health care in America because she had actually gone to a doctor once,” Armey said finishing his tale to the gathering of anti-health care reform activists who nodded and laughed as he spoke. (The video was captured and first highlighted by ThinkProgress.)

Maddow recalled appearing with Senator Coburn and Dick Armey on ‘Meet the Press‘ and replays video of the brief exchange with Coburn. The discussion was centered around threats of violence that have been heard at some of the anti-health care reform rallies around the nation, and the Senator was defending the threats by claiming that they were “Just symptoms of a loss of faith in government,” and that “When people are afraid, they’ll do all sorts of things they wouldn’t normally do.”

Barely able to get a word in with Coburn, Maddow’s response was that she didn’t believe the government had done anything that would justify threats such as “The blood of tyrants must run in the streets!”

“That was my only exchange with Tom Coburn in front of Dick Armey,” the MSNBC show host explains, “Now if Mr. Armey thinks I was not qualified to be in that discussion because Tom Coburn is a gynecologist and I’m not, I wonder why Dick Armey thought that he was qualified to be in that room?”